Swift Services Company Database Remodeling

Swift Services Company Database Remodeling

Project Outline

Company Overview

Swift Services is a diversified freight company established in mid-1987 by Nerv Thomas (Swift Services, n.d.). Currently, the company is led by Thomas and Melinna; Thomas’ wife. Swift Services has its head office along Longpoint Road in Houston, Texas. It also has two branches in Houston and others in Baytown, Texas. Despite the company having most of its offices in Texas, it is licensed in 48 states (Swift Services, n.d.). Swift Services has approximately 40 employees that work as per the company’s organizational structure and culture.

Project Introduction

The freight company provides rental and equipment sale services (Swift Services, n.d.). Rental services are rendered within Houston, Texas. This includes fuel tracks, tractors, bucket trucks, vans, dump trucks, services trucks, pickup trucks, yard mules, specialized vehicles and equipment, water trucks, trailers, and skate beds (Swift Services, n.d.). Equipment sales include pioneer truck houses and cabs.  Swift Services also provides busing services for companies as well as schools within Houston. The busing services are categorized as turnaround busing, tours, project transportation, shuttle services, dedicated contract services, and charters. Swift Services has a commendable fleet of yard mule tractors that are rented for gas and oil projects. Consequently, the company receives a good income. Also, its busing services are largely used by Fortune 500 companies, hence, receiving a high flow of income. Some of the competitors of Swift Services are Yard Mule Specialists and AFC Houston. Yard Mule Specialists provide services similar to those provided by Swift Services by their fleet of yard mules (Yard Mule Specialists Texas, n.d.). However, Swift Services focuses on the Texas market, while Yard Mule Specialists serve four more states; Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Serving a bigger market is advantageous for Yard Mule Specialists because the company could receive more income and customer sensitization. AFC Houston, like Swift Services, provides busing services in Houston, Texas (AFC Houston, 2018). However, AFC Houston, unlike Swift Services, only focuses on busing services.

1.3 Problem Identification

1.3.1 Problem Context and Background

The problem at Swift Services is that system reports are inconsistent and have omissions. Therefore, the reports auto-generated by the system cannot be relied on to provide accurate information for various departments. This is a problem because, without proper information, strategic decisions about the company would not be accurate. For example, without the right numbers on the business transactions made in a day, it would be difficult to know the exact income for the company that day. If the trend continues to a second day, then a week, a month, a year, it could affect an entire financial year. Inconsistent reports in a system are mostly a result of poor database modelling (Kraleva et al., 2018). When the database structure is poor, a record is not correctly committed in the database. One record could overwrite or duplicate another. This would cause inconsistencies when printing reports. Meaning, that some of the information might be omitted from the reports, duplicated, or incorrectly placed. This might not only affect the company’s financial reports but also customer service. For example, when a customer makes an inquiry on the company’s website, his inquiry could be mixed up with another customer’s inquiry making it difficult for customer support to respond effectively. Also, customers’ rental records could be mixed up, resulting in overcharging or undercharging customers. Consequently, customers would find the company incompetent and opt to change their provider. Losing customers would negatively impact Swift Services’ performance.

If system reports or any other issue is traced back to database design, the three steps of database modelling could be repeated. The steps are conceptual, logical, and physical modelling (Ribeiro, Silva & Silva, 2015). Conceptual modelling captures database requirements as presented by the client. Meaning, it models the database according to what the client requires the database to store. This mainly includes the number of tables that would be required to store data in the database and their names (Ribeiro et al., 2015). The logical modelling step ensures that the tables defined in the conceptual model are organized in a relational database structure. This includes using primary keys and foreign keys to establish relationships between tables (Ribeiro et al., 2015). Consequently, a record updated in the database reflects in all the required tables simultaneously. After the conceptual and logical modelling steps are completed, the physical modelling step is implemented. In that step, the database is finally implemented according to the chosen Relational Database Management System (Ribeiro et al., 2015). The physical model is detailed in such a way that all database specifications are listed. This includes table names, attributes, primary and foreign keys, data types, and relationships. Therefore, the model can be used whenever the database requires remodelling. Meaning, that the same could be used for Swift Services database remodelling.

1.3.2 Problem Statement

System reports generated at Swift Services are inconsistent and erroneous. This could negatively affect the business leading to customer and financial loss.

References

AFC Houston. (2018, June 19). About us. Retrieved from https://afchouston.com/about-us/

Kraleva, R., Kralev, V., Sinyagina, N., Koprinkova-Hristova, P., & Bocheva, N. (2018). Design and Analysis of a Relational Database for Behavioral Experiments Data Processing. International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering (iJOE), 14(2), 117-132. Retrieved from https://online-journals.org/index.php/i-joe/article/download/7988/4820

Ribeiro, A., Silva, A., & Silva, A. (2015). Data Modeling and Data Analytics: A Survey from a Big Data Perspective. Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 8, 617-634. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288872507_Data_Modeling_and_Data_Analytics_A_Survey_from_a_Big_Data_Perspective

Swift Services. (n.d.). Houston’s top commercial trucking & fleet management service. Retrieved from https://www.swiftservices.net/ABOUT-US

Yard Mule Specialists Texas. (n.d.). Terminal tractor | Yard mule specialists | United States. Retrieved from https://www.ymstexas.com/

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The ‘Problem Context and Background’ section is too focused on justifying a pre-determined solution and not on presenting evidence and details that lead the company to recognize they have a computer science problem to solve. Further, the solution discussed is well established and can be trivially solved with commercially available solutions.

Swift Services Company Database Remodeling

> The ‘Problem Statement’ is weak. It is poorly worded and hard to understand. It also presents a problem that can be solved with a trivial solution. In IP2, you must use academic research and analysis to propose non-trivial solutions.

> You should include an in-text citation to support the statement ‘Swift customer transactions must align with The Department of Transportation’s regulatory policies for proper commercial vehicle mobility on related public roads.’.

> The sentence ‘Swift owns four locations, each with a specific role played within the business operational scheme, and only two locations that have computational systems installed accordingly, both locations residing in Houston, TX. ‘ is written unnecessarily long and complicated which makes it difficult to understand. Edit to be more concise.